Woodward will build its new world headquarters in Fort Collins (updated)

Impact on Loveland facility isn't clear

By Craig Young Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:
04/26/2013 10:21:21 AM MDT

Updated:
04/26/2013 05:26:05 PM MDT

This map, included in documents filed with the city of Fort Collins, shows an aerial view of the new Woodward campus at Lemay and Lincoln avenues east of downtown Fort Collins.
(
Special to the Reporter-Herald
)

FORT COLLINS -- Industrial-controls manufacturer Woodward Inc. announced Friday that it would build its new world headquarters in Fort Collins.

Woodward, already based in Fort Collins, has been seeking a site for a new corporate campus. Last summer, the company publicly identified the 101-acre Link-N-Greens golf course site near downtown Fort Collins as its first choice.

"I truly believe, when we get this up and running, it's going to be one of the best examples of an infill project in the country," Woodward CEO Tom Gendron said Friday morning in a conference call announcing the decision.

Woodward, which will close on the $9 million purchase of the property Tuesday, plans to build a $200 million manufacturing and office complex in four phases.

The campus southeast of the intersection of Lemay and Lincoln avenues will be partially bordered on the south and east by the Cache la Poudre River.

The Fort Collins City Council has approved a $23.5 million incentive package for Woodward, and in turn the company will donate about 30 acres of its property to the city for river restoration and use by the city's trail system.

In the first phase of construction, which will begin this summer and take up to two years to complete, Woodward will construct three buildings containing 259,000 square feet for its Industrial Turbomachinery Systems unit.

Phase 2, targeted for completion in the summer of 2015, will consist of a 60,000-square-foot headquarters building.

Phases 3 and 4 have less clear-cut timetables; preliminary plans call for an Engine Systems facility and an Energy Technology testing center.

Loveland's Woodward facility, which opened in January 1993 at 3800 N. Wilson Ave., contains the company's Engine Systems unit and some Industrial Turbomachinery functions, according to Woodward spokesman Don Guzzardo.

Gendron said Woodward officials don't know yet what they will do with the existing facilities in Loveland and Fort Collins once the new campus is built.

"Right now, we're going through our assessment of what's going to go in what facilities and what's the future state of each one," he said.

"What we definitely have today is facilities that are overcrowded," Gendron said. "We don't have adequate offices, we don't have adequate production space. We don't even have adequate testing."

Gendron said a major factor in its selection of Fort Collins was the attractiveness of the site to current and future employees.

"One of the big attributes that led us to look at this is proximity to the thriving Old Town area and proximity to CSU - both the CSU campus and the Engines Lab," he said.

Woodward employs about 1,200 workers in Northern Colorado, and the new campus could have 1,400 to 2,200, according to city of Fort Collins documents.

Construction on the project is expected to employ more than 1,600.

Ghafari Associates of Dearborn, Mich., will provide architectural and engineering services on the project, and M.A. Mortensen Co. of Minneapolis will serve as the construction manager and general contractor.

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